You Can Hear It in the Silence
by WonderPickle
Summary: "You can hear it in the silence. You can feel it on the way home. You can see it with the lights out. You are in love. True love." -Taylor Swift. Quintis one-shot.


**last night gave me so many damn feelings. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't know what to write, so I just kinda did my best to explain how MUCH I was feeling. even more than a typical episode gives me. Toby and Happy are soulmates in every sense of the word. no matter where, no matter how, no matter when, they will fall in love. we already knew that, but still. it fucked me up.**

 **enjoy this spill of feelings I somehow managed to string into (somewhat) understandable sentences**

* * *

Her arms curled tighter around his body. She knew he was still there, she knew he wasn't going anywhere. But after almost losing him today, letting go wasn't worth the risk.

They had the TV playing, something stupid they barely gave attention. They were more focused on each other. The side of his face rested against her head, while hers leaned into his chest. Her body had gone numb from the stillness at least twenty minutes ago. Although her mind couldn't achieve the same feeling. Genius brains never stopped working, actually all brains didn't, but now more than usual. Calmness softened the outer layer, her thoughts were peaceful with him. Their breathing harmonized, chests simultaneously rising and falling.

Underneath, the slowly dying heat of the day burned. It was beginning to fade, though, and with time it would altogether. Almost every case was near-death for Scorpion. Sometimes they just hit her a little harder. And sometimes they affected him especially, too. Those nights were better spent with forehead kisses and secure arms, rather than passionate lip-locks and minimal clothes.

When Paige's scream initially came over the coms, Happy had to latch onto something. Then she nearly smashed it. Walter needed her on task in the garage, despite her husband beginning to bleed out. She'd been tempted to book it, race her truck downtown and to his side. But the job's importance required her jack to be completed as soon as possible. Finishing it so the team could rescue a baby bear, trapped under dozens of rocks in its habitat at LA zoo, was what Walter continued to urge a very pressing matter. It was, just not as much as one of those damn boulders slicing Toby.

Luckily, they prevented the bleeding. Doctors later fixed him up and said he was good to go. Hearing that dissolved the tension from her body. It'd been so heavy, at first, its departure left her feeling like she was going to float away.

Now, she let his smell wash over her, the sound of his beating heart, the scruff tickling her temple as he lowered his chin.

She punished herself for staying back. She hugged him when they were reunited. She didn't let him out of her sight at the hospital.

And she didn't have to say anything about it. Not a word. Neither did he, about anything he was feeling. He read her without flaw. She studied him like a book she knew by the back of her hand.

He reminded her that he loved her, over and over again, only using his eyes. The way she held him, the way she looked at him, the way she said his name, breathed the essence of her love into the very air. Their actions spoke words no one else could hear. A language said through silence, where every letter _they_ defined.

Sometimes she never wanted to let him go. And he held her until she was ready. She used to dislike when all he wanted to do was lay with her. But she grew to understand why he did. She was whole in his arms. He was at his happy place in hers.

Somewhere safe. Somewhere they came to for comfort. Somewhere only they could fit. Somewhere the rest of the world couldn't touch.

But _outside_ them, the world _could_. That's why she grasped tight, wordlessly telling him she needed her other half. He already knew, though. She told him again and again anyway, because she had to say it enough. Him returning the embrace whispered it louder than words were ever expressed. And he repeated it. She knew, and he repeated it.

Their love surpassed words. They were not enough to express. Nothing was. Yet they used every means at their disposal, because their love was all-consuming, all enveloping. Calmer as time elapsed, but no less powerful. They wanted to say it, had to. Neither of them had ever imagined deserving love so great, or love at all. But they found the other half of their souls in each other, which drove the lingering years of misery away, killed the bitter loneliness, and that was something worth mentioning.


End file.
